Gold Bar is a foothill town on the Skykomish. The river is the flood story, and the banks above it are rock and thin soil. Spring water comes down the cuts fast, and a lawn or a driveway that ignores that ends up as a channel. Foothill banks want mass. A light stack will walk down the hill the first winter the seep gets behind it.
Snohomish County · ZIP 98251 · 2020 population 1,918
This is the ground rock walls are for
We use large base stones, a batter back into the hill, and drain rock in the voids so the wall is not holding a lake. The face stone is local and irregular. A cut bank above a drive is structural, and if the height needs an engineer we stop and get one instead of adding another course.
Machine access is the limit. If the driveway cannot take the truck, the wall gets smaller or it gets built from stone we can actually place. We will not design a quarry face we cannot deliver.
The ground in Gold Bar
Lots here are not the flat rectangles of Marysville. Driveways climb, yards step down toward the river or the highway, and the native ground is rocky enough that a shovel stops early. When the river runs high, low ground remembers it. We do not put a finished lawn or a bark bed in a spot that has carried water.
What works is straightforward: rock and retaining where the bank is moving, gravel on the steep drive, and a drain that has a real outlet instead of a hole filled with hope. Plantings stay rugged. A manicured hedge is a maintenance bill in a town that gets the mountain rain. Cleanup is often storm debris and alder coming in from the edge of the clearing.
How we do the work
A rock wall is dry-stacked or lightly set, with the weight in the stone and the drainage in the voids. It is not a veneer glued to a failing timber wall. We use rock big enough for the height, with a face that leans back into the hill, and smaller rock locked behind so the soil does not pipe through.
Good rock work looks heavier at the bottom. If every stone is the same patio-sized block, it is not a wall, it is a stack. We source local stone and we will tell you when the access cannot take the boulder the job wants.
What we look at first
- Height and whether it is structural or a garden edge
- Machine access for real boulders
- The soil behind: clay that needs a drain, or rock that already sheds
- An existing wall we are tying into
Tying into old rockery
We can often continue an existing rockery if the old base is still honest. If the old wall is tipping, we take it down and use the good stone again. Matching a lean is how you extend a failure.
The base course
The biggest stones, buried, on compacted rock or competent ground. If the first course is the one you can see sitting on the grass, the wall is already failing. You should see the second course at grade, not the bottom of the first.
Dry stack versus mortared
Most of our rock walls are dry, so water can leave and the wall can move a little without cracking a joint. Mortar is for a low, formal edge that is not holding a wet hill. We do not mortar a drainage problem shut.
More from this crew
- Rock walls across Snohomish County
- Retaining walls in Gold Bar
- Gravel installation in Gold Bar
- Landscaping in Gold Bar
- Hardscaping in Gold Bar
- Rock walls in Sultan
- Rock walls in Index
- Rock walls in Monroe
Sources for the climate and the water
- USDA plant hardiness map for choosing plants that can take a Snohomish County winter.
- EPA WaterSense on watering less once a lawn or a new planting is established.
- EPA Soak Up the Rain on keeping roof and yard water from becoming someone else’s problem.
